Quest is a two-sided marketplace that reimagined how DeFi protocols interact with governance tokenholders by introducing an efficient bounty system for voting incentives, ultimately capturing 20% market share in the vote incentive market on Ethereum.
Timeline:
Role:
Team Size:
Stack:
The Challenge
Quest Market was developed to address the disconnection between DeFi protocols seeking governance support and tokenholders with voting power in platforms like Curve, Convex, Balancer, and Aura. Prior to Quest, protocols lacked efficient mechanisms to incentivize voters, resulting in unpredictable costs and unclear ROI.
As a V2 product, we needed to enhance functionality while maintaining usability, allowing protocols to post bounties with flexible payment terms that optimized budget spend based on market demand and pricing.
The challenge extended beyond just creating a marketplace – we needed to develop an experience that would serve both sophisticated protocols requiring customization and users seeking simplicity, all while building features that would drive adoption in a competitive market.
Key Challenges
• Balancing added V2 power features with maintaining simplicity in the bounty creation process
• Addressing gaps in the bounty workflow that required white-glove service
• Reducing friction for voters through automation while providing clear information for manual voters
Process
Stakeholder Collab
• Conducted user interviews with both protocols and voters to understand pain points
• CEO gathered feedback from power users to identify market opportunities
• Analyzed market trends and technical constraints to shape feature prioritization
• Iterated designs based on direct feedback from early users
Project Management
• Coordinated asynchronously with regular weekly check-ins
• Held targeted meetings at key decision points
• Maintained design progress ahead of engineering to enable parallel workflows
Challenges & Solutions
• Engineering resources were stretched thin across multiple ecosystem projects
• Resolved by carefully sequencing development priorities in collaboration with CEO and CTO
• Maintained design momentum to ensure handoffs were ready when engineering bandwidth became available
• Implemented progressive disclosure design patterns to reduce complexity
The Solution
Quest Market V2 reimagined the voting incentive marketplace with a dual-track approach. For protocols, we created streamlined bounty creation with progressive disclosure - hiding complex features unless specifically needed. This allowed both new users and power users to efficiently create bounties tailored to their needs. For voters, we introduced an innovative auto-voter feature that eliminated the need for weekly manual voting, dramatically reducing user friction.
Key Features
Dual-flow Quest Creation
• Quick flow with smart defaults for common use cases
• Advanced flow with full customization for experienced protocols
• Progressive disclosure of complex features to maintain visual simplicity
Auto-voter System
• Opt-in system allowing voters to automate their participation
• Reduced weekly manual voting requirements
• Increased voter retention and participation rates
Payout Simulation Tools
• Interactive calculator showing potential rewards based on voting power
• Helped manual voters make informed decisions quickly
Impact
Quest Market V2 successfully:
• Facilitated over $10M in reward distribution
• Quadrupled market share from 5% to 20% in 2024
• Attracted participation from most major DeFi projects
Lessons Learned
• Cross-functional coordination is essential when working with limited resources in competitive markets
• There's a natural ceiling to how much DeFi complexity can be abstracted through UI alone
• Sometimes the most effective simplification requires completely rethinking an approach rather than incremental improvements
